Robert B. Parker's Debt to Pay: Jesse Stone, Book 15

All is quiet in Paradise, except for a spate of innocuous vandalism. Good thing, too, because Jesse Stone is preoccupied with the women in his life, both past and present. As his ex-wife, Jenn, is about to marry a Dallas real-estate tycoon, Jesse isn't too sure his relationship with former FBI agent Diana Evans is built to last. But those concerns get put on the back burner when a major Boston crime boss is brutally murdered. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Jesse suspects it's the work of Mr. Peepers.

Appaloosa

When it comes to writing, Robert B. Parker knows no boundaries. From the iconic Spenser detective series and the novels featuring Sunny Randall and Jesse Stone, to the groundbreaking historical novel Double Play, Parker's imagination has taken readers from Boston to Brooklyn and back again. In Appaloosa, fans are taken on another trip, to the untamed territories of the West during the 1800s.

Hush Money: Spenser Series, Book 26

When Robin Nevins, the son of Hawk's boyhood mentor, is denied at an exclusive university, Hawk asks Spenser to investigate. It seems the denial is tied to the suicide of a young gay activist, and as Spenser digs deeper, he is nearly drowned in a multicultural swamp of politics: black, gay, academic, and feminist. At the same time, Spenser's inamorata, Susan, asks him to come to the aid of an old college friend, K.C. Roth, the victim of a stalker. Spenser solves the problem a bit too effectively when K.C. turns the tables and begins to stalk him.

The Godwulf Manuscript

Spenser earned his degree in the school of hard knocks, so he is ready when a Boston university hires him to recover a rare, stolen manuscript. He is hardly surprised that his only clue is a radical student with four bullets in his chest. The cops are ready to throw the book at the pretty blond coed whose prints are all over the murder weapon but Spenser knows there are no easy answers. He tackles some very heavy homework and knows that if he doesn't finish his assignment soon, he could end up dead.

Escape Clause: A Virgil Flowers Novel, Book 9

The first storm comes from, of all places, the Minnesota zoo. Two large and very rare Amur tigers have vanished from their cage, and authorities are worried sick that they've been stolen for their body parts. Traditional Chinese medicine prizes those parts for home remedies, and people will do extreme things to get what they need. Some of them are a great deal more extreme than others - as Virgil is about to find out.

Deer Run Trail

The year was 1881, an' young Ruben Beeler was makin' his way along near the Missouri River, findin' work when he could an' livin' the only life he knew. When he come on ol' Arliss Hyatt, beat to hell an' near shot to death, Rube done what he could for him. He didn't know that act of kindness was gonna wind up changin' his whole life, but it did.

Bloodshed of the Mountain Man

Smoke Jensen has journeyed up to the Colorado Rockies to a sell a prized bull to a local rancher. Instead, the rancher and his wife have been mercilessly slaughtered by outlaws only moments before Smoke's arrival. In a hail of bullets, Smoke pulverizes two of the murderers and drags two others to the town of Brown Spur for justice. Come hanging day, the two killers are on the way to the gallows when a thundering gang of raiders crashes into town and rescues them from the jaws of death.

Night School: A Jack Reacher Novel, Book 21

It's 1996, and Reacher is still in the army. In the morning they give him a medal, and in the afternoon they send him back to school. That night he's off the grid. Out of sight, out of mind. Two other men are in the classroom - an FBI agent and a CIA analyst. Each is a first-rate operator, each is fresh off a big win, and each is wondering what the hell they are doing there. Then they find out: A jihadist sleeper cell in Hamburg, Germany, has received an unexpected visitor - a Saudi courier seeking safe haven while waiting to rendezvous with persons unknown.

The Ranger: A Quinn Colson Novel

Northeast Mississippi: hill country, rugged and notorious for outlaws since the Civil War, where killings are as commonplace as in the Old West. To Quinn Colson, it's home - but not the home he left when he went to Afghanistan. Now an Army Ranger, he returns to a place overrun by corruption, and finds his uncle, the county sheriff, dead - a suicide, he's told, but others whisper murder.

The Highwayman: A Longmire Story

When Wyoming highway patrolman Rosey Wayman is transferred to the beautiful and imposing landscape of the Wind River Canyon, an area the troopers refer to as no-man's-land because of the lack of radio communication, she starts receiving "officer needs assistance" calls. The problem? They're coming from Bobby Womack, a legendary Arapaho patrolman who met a fiery death in the canyon almost a half century ago.

Dead Man's Walk

In Dead Man's Walk, Gus and Call are not yet 20, young men coming of age in the days when Texas was still an independent republic. Enlisting as Texas Rangers under a land pirate who wants to seize Santa Fe from the Mexicans, Gus and Call experience their first great adventure in the barren great plains landscape, in which arbitrary violence is the rule -- whether from nature, or from the Indians whose territory they must cross in order to reach New Mexico.<

Luke Jensen, Bounty Hunter

Luke Jensen, Bounty Hunter is the first in an exciting new series starring Smoke's long-lost brother. During the Civil War, Confederate soldier Luke Jensen is ordered to smuggle gold out of the city - but he ends up robbed and shot. Taken in by a Georgia farmer, Luke slowly recovers. Though he plans to rejoin Smoke, a budding romance with the farmer's daughter delays his departure - until a tragic event changes everything.

A Time to Die: Victor the Assassin, Book 6

Now that professional assassin Victor is indentured to British Intelligence, he is tasked with eliminating the worst of the worst. One such man is Milan Rados, a former Serbian paramilitary commander wanted for war crimes and now head of an organized criminal network in Belgrade. He has escaped justice once already, so it's Victor's job to take the justice to him.

Potshot

Boston P.I. Spenser returns - heading west to the rich man's haven of Potshot, Arizona, a former mining town recently reborn as a paradise for Los Angeles millionaires looking for a place to escape the pressures of their high-flying lifestyles. When a band of modern-day mountain men, led by a charismatic individual known as The Preacher, takes over the town, even the local police are powerless to defend the residents in the face of the clever, dangerous gang.

Reckless Abandon: Stone Barrington, Book 10

Cop-turned-lawyer Stone Barrington tracks a mobster hiding deep within the witness protection program in this new thriller in the New York Times best-selling series - with a little help from beautiful Florida police chief Holly Barker.

The High Graders

The story was that Eli Patterson had died in a gunfight, but Mike Shevlin knew it couldn't be true: The man who'd been like a father to him had been a Quaker. But when Shevlin rides back to Rafter Crossing to uncover the truth, he finds that the quiet ranching community has become a booming mining town. Newfound wealth has not made Rafter a peaceful place, however, and the smell of fear and greed is thick in the air.

Open Season: A Joe Pickett Novel

C.J. Box’s Open Season is a rare debut mystery that “immediately sets itself apart from the crowd” (Booklist). This thrilling novel stars Joe Pickett, a game warden in Wyoming who finds his life in danger after he looks into a murder investigation and discovers a conspiracy involving an oil pipeline and its threat to an endangered species.

Smooth Operator

When President Kate Lee calls Stone Barrington to Washington on an urgent matter, it's soon clear that a potentially disastrous situation requires the kind of help more delicate than even he can provide...and he knows just the right man for the job. Teddy Fay: ex-CIA, master of disguise, and a gentleman not known for abiding by legal niceties in the pursuit of his own brand of justice.

Amazon Customer says:"this is the best Stone Barrington book in years."

Publisher's Summary

Robert B. Parker gives his fans the book he always longed to write - a brilliant and evocative novel set against the hard scrabble frontier life of the West, featuring Wyatt Earp.

It is the winter of 1879, and Dodge city has lost its snap. Thirty-one-year-old Wyatt Earp, assistant city marshal, loads his wife and all they own into a wagon, and goes with two of his brothers and their women to Tombstone, Arizona, land of the silver mines. There Earp becomes deputy sheriff, meeting up with the likes of Doc Holliday, Clay Allison and Bat Masterson as well as finding the love of his life, showgirl Josie Marcus. While navigating the constantly shifting alliances of a largely lawless territory, Earp finds himself embroiled in a simmering feud with Johnny Behan, which ultimately erupts in deadly gunfire on a dusty street corner.

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

I thoroughly enjoyed the snippets of parallel history that Parker inserts periodically and, because I'm a history buff, I considered that, because I was learning new and interesting historical connections, it was time well spent. I also liked the fact that Parker's characterization of Wyatt Earp dovetailed with his descriptions of Virgil Cole in his other western series. Unfortunately he peopled this story with rather colorless characters, unlike Pony Flores, Hitch, Allie and Laurel who made the Cole series crackle with life.

Would you recommend Gunman's Rhapsody to your friends? Why or why not?

I might recommend this book to people who enjoy history, especially western history, because I know that Parker researched the Earp history carefully. I wouldn't recommend it based on a compelling narrative or spine-tingling action.

What three words best describe Ed Begley Jr.’s voice?

Unemotional, flat, mediocre

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

Perhaps, but the movie has already been made with Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer.....with variations to the story. The movie script was more compelling than this story.